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education, as applied to the masses, extends its effects to those who 

 follow out the higher branches of science. Not perceiving the snare 

 into which they fall, too easy victims, they play into the hands of 

 the enemies of human thought and human freedom. What ought 

 to be Science is made into Mystery. And there is far too great a 

 disposition to follow this example, (often, perhaps, unconsciously,) 

 in England. This is particularly shown in the language and style 

 that are adopted. I purposely forbear to quote examples : but it 

 must be familiar to every one of you that you can hardly take up a 

 so-called " scientific " book without finding it so interlarded with 

 phrases and words which never were English, and which bear no 

 intelligible meaning, that science is made repulsive, instead of at- 

 tractive, by those who profess to be the masters of it. 



True science can be no mystery. A Earaday does not think it 

 beneath his dignity to give popular lectures, on the science which 

 he has illuminated, to a Christmas audience. We do not live in an 

 Egyptian age, when a few self-assuming priests shall have one lan- 

 guage which is to be understood only by the initiated, and another 

 which they condescend to employ in converse with the common 

 people. We live in an age when the boast is paraded that science 

 and art are applied to every purpose of common life. Then, Gen- 

 tlemen, it is high time that science and art shall be taught in the 

 language of common life, and not be smothered by a jargon which 

 is as repulsive to good taste as it is obstructive to the spread of 

 knowledge. The ridiculous jargon into which what is miscalled 

 scientific phraseology has got, latterly, to run, is wholly without ex- 

 cuse. It is not Latin and it is not Greek : nay, it is generally as 

 unintelligible to those familiar with both those languages as it is to 

 any one bred only in the vernacular, and often even more mislead- 

 ing to the former than to the latter. It is certain that it is not 

 English. We inherit a language more copious than the Greek 

 ever was, and one which is peculiarly adaptable for the compound- 

 ing of words ; and which, therefore, may be most readily moulded 

 to the expression of new forms of fact and thought. The man who 

 is unable to express, in English, whatever he has of science to teach, 

 stands confessed as simply unready, and as making pretensions to 

 what does not in truth belong to him. Instead of being a man of 

 real science, he is a charlatan, who seeks to disguise the ignorance 



